This document contains information about editorial practice
for the Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA) ™,
one of the vocabularies produced by the Getty Vocabulary Program.
The other three vocabularies are the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)®, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic
Names (TGN)®, and the Union List of Artist Names
(ULAN)®.

NOTE: The guidelines in this document are subject
to frequent modification and addition.

Purpose of these
guidelines
CONA is a new Getty vocabulary currently under development. We hope to introduce it to the contributor community in 2011. It will include authority records for cultural works, including architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and other visual media such as frescoes and architectural sculpture, performance art, archaeological artifacts, and various functional objects that are from the realm of material culture and of the type collected by museums.

This document contains rules and guidelines for CONA, intended for use
by the editors of the Getty Vocabulary Program using the in-house
editorial system, VCS (Vocabulary Coordination System). Contributors
to the Getty Vocabularies and implementers of the licensed
vocabulary data may consult these guidelines as well. However,
contributors and implementers should keep in mind that they
must extrapolate information and guidance appropriate for
their own needs and uses.

Purpose of CONA
Like the AAT, TGN, and ULAN, CONA is a structured vocabulary that can
be used to improve access to information about art, architecture,
and material culture.

CONA may be used as a data value standard at the point
of documentation or cataloging. In this context, CONA may
be used as a controlled vocabulary or authority to provide
preferred titles and names for works of art and architecture, as
well as historical names and other synonyms that could be used by the cataloger or
indexer. CONA also provides structure and classification
schemes that can aid in documentation.

CONA may be used as a search assistant in database retrieval
systems, taking advantage of the semantic networks of links
and paths between works and related concepts; these relationships can make
retrieval more successful.

CONA may be utilized as a research tool, valuable because
of the rich information and contextual knowledge it contains.

Focus
CONA and the other Getty vocabularies are intended to provide terminology and other information about the objects, artists, concepts, and places important to various disciplines that specialize in art, architecture and material culture. CONA contains titles and other information about architecture and movable works, which include paintings, sculpture, and a wide range of other objects.

The primary users of the Getty vocabularies include museums, art libraries, archives, visual resource collection catalogers, bibliographic projects concerned with art, researchers in art and art history, and the information specialists who are dealing with the needs of these users. In addition, a significant number of users of the Getty vocabularies are students or members of the general public.

A minimum record in CONA contains a numeric ID, title or name, creator, object/work type, and other fields as described below. Information in CONA is compiled by the Getty Vocabulary Program in collaboration with many institutions. Implementers should keep in mind that CONA, like the other Getty vocabularies, will grow and change over time.

Accessing the vocabularies: The timeframe for making CONA accessible to users will depend upon the rate at which contributions are received from the target user community. A target date for licensing is 2013. The online "browser" is scheduled to go live in early 2012. Licensed files will hopefully be available within a few years, keeping in mind that a certain critical mass of records will be required to make CONA useful to licensees. Methods for accessing CONA are still under development, although it is currently believed that CONA data will be available using means similar to those available for the other three Getty vocabularies, as described below.

Catalogers and indexers who use the AAT, TGN, and ULAN typically access them in two ways: By using them as implemented in a system (either purchased off-the-shelf through a vendor or custom-built for their local requirements), or by using the online databases on the Getty Web site. The databases made available on the Web site are intended to support limited research and cataloging efforts. Companies and institutions interested in regular or extensive use of the existing three Getty vocabularies should explore licensing options by contacting the Getty Vocabulary Program at vocab@getty.edu. Implementers who wish to provide vocabularies to end-users or use them in search engines may license the vocabularies in XML or relational tables, which are released annually. The data is also available via Web services, where it is updated every two weeks. The licensed files include no user interface.

Contributors
CONA is a compiled resource; it is not comprehensive. It grows
over time to become gradually more comprehensive and to accommodate new research in art history and archaeology.
CONA grows through contributions. Information in CONA
was compiled by the Getty Vocabulary Program in collaboration with
many institutions. Institutions interested in becoming contributors
to CONA should write to vocab@getty.edu, explaining the
scope of their collections and likely contributions.

Scope of CONA
CONA is a structured vocabulary containing authority records for cultural works, including architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, textiles, ceramics, furniture, other visual media such as frescoes and architectural sculpture, performance art, archaeological artifacts, and various functional objects that are from the realm of material culture and of the type collected by museums. The focus of CONA is works cataloged in scholarly literature, museum collections, visual resources collections, archives, libraries, and indexing projects with a primary emphasis on art, architecture, or archaeology.

1.1.1.2

Structure of the Data
The focus of each CONA record is a work of art or architecture. In the database, each work's record (also called a subject in the database, not to be confused with iconographical depicted subjects of art works) is identified by a unique numeric ID. Linked to each work's record are titles/names, current location, dates, other fields, related works, a parent (that is, a position in the hierarchy), sources for the data, and notes. The coverage of CONA is global, from prehistory through the present. Names or titles may be current, historical, and in various languages.

1.1.1.2.1

Facets and heirarchies The primary top divisions of CONA are the facets Built Work and Movable Work.

Unpublished facets in CONA are used for candidate records.
Unpublished facets and hierarchies are designated by a flag and the
"name" temp.parent (e.g., temp.parent/candidate
records)

1.1.2

What is a Thesaurus?

The basic structure of CONA is a thesaurus, with other types of information clustered around this structure. A thesaurus is a semantic
network of unique concepts, including relationships between
synonyms, broader and narrower (parent/child) contexts,
and other related concepts. Thesauri allow three types of
relationships: equivalence (synonym), hierarchical (whole/part, instance,
or genus/species), and associative.

There are many fields in CONA, however through titles/names (equivalence relationships), as well as hierarchical and associative relationships, the basic structure of CONA is that of a thesaurus in compliance with ISO and NISO standards. Although it may be displayed as a list, CONA is a hierarchical database; its trees branch from a root called Top of the CONA hierarchy (Subject_ID: 700000000).

There may be multiple broader contexts, making CONA polyhierarchical. In addition to the hierarchical relationships (e.g., between a print and the larger volume to which it belongs), CONA has equivalence relationships (between equivalent titles/names) and associative relationships (e.g., between a sketch and the final work).

Most fields in CONA records are written in English. However,
the structure of CONA supports multilinguality insofar
as titles/names and descriptive notes may be written and flagged in multiple
languages. All terms are written in the Roman alphabet (pending
our conversion to Unicode in 2011).

1.1.2.1

Relationships:
Thesauri may have the following three relationships:

1.1.2.1.1

Equivalence relationships
The relationships between synonymous titles or names that refer
to the same work, typically distinguishing preferred titles and non-preferred terms (variants).

1.1.2.1.2

Hierarchical relationships
Broader and narrower (parent/child) relationships between
concepts. Hierarchical relationships are generally either
whole/part, genus/species, or instance; in CONA, most hierarchical
relationships are whole part (e.g., a drawing is a part of a sketchbook). Relationships may be polyhierarchical,
meaning that each child may be linked to multiple parents. Historical whole/part relationships may be tracked.

1.1.2.1.3

Associative relationships
The relationships between works that are directly related, but the relationship is not hierarchical because
it is not whole/part or genus/species. An example is a drawing that is a study for a built work.

1.1.3

What is a "Work" in CONA?CONA contains records for Built Works and Movable Works.

Built works: Built works within the scope of CONA are architecture, which includes structures or parts of structures that are the result of conscious construction, are of practical use, are relatively stable and permanent, and are of a size and scale appropriate for—but not limited to—habitable buildings. Most built works in CONA are manifestations of the built environment that is typically classified as fine art, meaning it is generally considered to have aesthetic value, was designed by an architect (whether or not his or her name is known), and constructed with skilled labor.

Movable works: The term movable works is borrowed from legal jargon, referring to tangible objects capable of being moved or conveyed from one place to another, as opposed to real estate or other buildings. It is useful to separate the two types of works—built works and movable works—into different facets in CONA because movable works typically are located in a repository, have a repository identification number, have a provenance of former locations, and other characteristics that typically differ from architecture.

Unique works: With the exception of performance art, CONA records unique physical works. However, CONA may include works that were never built or that no longer exist, for example designs for a building that was not constructed or a work that has been destroyed.

1.1.3.1

What is excluded from CONA?
In general, CONA does not include records for objects in natural history or scientific collections, although there are exceptions for works of particularly fine craftsmanship that are of the type collected by art museums. CONA does not include names of musical or dramatic art, titles of documentary or feature films, and titles of literature. CONA does not include records for corporate bodies, although the building that houses the corporate body would be included, even if it has the same name as the corporate body. For example the buildings of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, are included in CONA; however, the corporate body that inhabits those buildings, also called the National Gallery of Art, is outside the scope of CONA (but within scope for ULAN).

1.2

Editorial control

1.2.1

Review Process

Records are created and edited by the Vocabulary Program
editors and trained, established contributors, following
the Editorial Rules laid out in this manual.

Other records are loaded from data extracted from contributors' cataloging systems or other databases.

As time permits, the Vocabulary Program reviews individual
records from contributors before they are released in CONA. All contributions are checked, but with less supervision
required for trained, established contributors.

Vocabulary Program (VP) editors follow strict rules when
adding new records toCONA. VP editors edit the contributors'
records to comply with VP policy and practice; however,
given the large number of records in CONA, editors do
not have the time or resources to edit every record. An
editorial goal is to have uniform and homogeneous records
throughout CONA, but employing flexible standards for
contributors' data means that the CONA database as a whole
is not entirely consistent or totally uniform.

The VP collects new issues that arise during the course
of accepting contributions and editing CONA. The resolutions
of these issues are periodically transferred to an updated
version of the manual.

1.2.2

Does contributors' data follow editorial
rules?

The Vocabulary Program communicates with and trains potential
contributors, to assure that 1) the incoming data will be
within the scope of CONA, and 2) the incoming data will
be in appropriate format and generally consistent with CONA standards.

Every effort is made to ensure that CONA data is consistent.
However, given that CONA may be compiled from various
contributors' automated records, it is necessary to allow
"flexible standards" in order to accept contributions.
Compliance with the critical standards regarding technical
rules, structure, content, and editorial guidelines are
required; however, certain other content and editorial guidelines
are considered non-critical and are therefore not strictly
enforced for some contributors.

1.3

Releasing the data

1.3.1

Web browsers

In 2012, CONA data is scheduled to be released online in the same way as other vocabularies' data. In the online Web versions of the AAT,
TGN, and ULAN, data is updated twice per month.

1.3.2

Licensed files

It is planned that CONA data will be released in licensed files. While the date of initial releases of this data will depend upon the rate at which contributions are received, it is hoped that the first release of licensed CONA files will happen in 2013. The exact terms of licensing and release formats is still under discussion.

However, it is anticipated that CONA data will be released in ways similar to that of the other three Getty vocabularies. Data in formats available for licensing for AAT, TGN, and ULAN is released annually
in June. The data is released in relational
tables and XML. Vocabulary editors clean the data as well
as possible prior to each annual release. The in-process data is also available throughout the year via Web services APIs; these files are refreshed every two weeks.

1.4

Vocabulary Coordination System (VCS)

VCS is the editorial system used to house and edit the
four Getty Vocabularies. Each vocabulary is stored in a
separate iteration of VCS. References to "the system"
refer to VCS. References made to "fields" refer
to data elements in VCS. References to a "record"
or "subject record" refer to an intellectual record
comprising all the data linked to a given Subject ID in
the data structure (not to be confused with the depicted iconographical "subject")..

1.4.1

Database

VCS uses a relational database; the database models for
each of the four vocabularies are identical in most ways,
differing only where necessary. See the Data Dictionary
for further information.

1.4.2

Merged Records

CONA is compiled from information that
has been collected by the Getty and other institutions.
When multiple contributors have submitted information about
the same work, all the titles and other information about this
work should be merged into a single record ("merge"
is a function of the VCS editorial system).

1.4.3

Operating VCS

The chapters in this manual contain definitions of the
fields, suggested values, sources where the values may be
found, and rules for entering the data where relevant. The
fields are presented roughly in the order in which they
are found in VCS.

While there is some mention of the functionality of VCS
in this manual, detailed instructions for the system are
not included here. Instructions regarding how to use VCS
are provided during training.

Last updated 15 September 2010 by Patricia Harpring
Document is subject to frequent revisions